Hairy descent from the summit
CENTRAL—Eagle Summit lived up to its reputation as one of the toughest obstacles in all of sled dog racing Monday.
When an early morning snowstorm descended upon the summit, conditions in the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race changed by the minute. Getting off the mountain became a matter of life and death for a handful of teams competing in both the 1,000-mile race to Whitehorse, Yukon, and the 300-mile qualifying race that takes place simultaneously.
Regina Wycoff, a Healy rookie competing in the 1,000-mile race, teamed with Quest 300 mushers Brent Sass and Randy Chappel to make the descent from Eagle Summit. Wycoff and Sass related their harrowing ordeal when they were in the warm embrace of the checkpoint at the Steese Roadhouse hours later.
Like all good stories, there was a measure of peril, including the loss of a dog team in a dangerous situation. But it also had a happy ending.
“Me and Randy were having a great race,” said Sass, a Goldstream Valley musher in his first race.
“I didn’t know Randy was behind me until I got to the top. The wind was blowing up there, it was blowing real hard. We couldn’t see. You couldn’t face the wind because it would pelt you so bad.”
Wycoff, trailing behind the 300 duo at that point, described the scene on top of Eagle Summit.
“It was like a sandstorm,” she said. “You had to walk with your head tilted because you couldn’t look straight into it. Once you got to the top, there was no going back.
“You had to take the next step. You had to go down the hill. We slid down the hill.”
Sass and Iditarod veteran Chappel decided to wait out the storm. They pulled their teams onto a small ridge and were prepared to stop for the night.
“We heard a dog bark, a dog not on our teams,” Sass said. “All the sudden there was a dog team there. It was Gina. She said, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and it was a great motivation to get going.”
The trio of dog teams all stayed close and began the long, steep descent over the summit’s rocky flank.
“There was no trail,” Sass said. “We were going over 3-foot snow drifts, rocks and tussocks.”
Wycoff said that there were points on the descent that were just freefalls down the icy face.
“It was crazy,” Wycoff said.
Then tragedy struck when Chappel, sliding down a particularly fast stretch, lost his sled.
“That’s the first rule of mushing, hold onto your sled,” Sass said. “He was holding on for dear life, but his team took off. Randy was pretty shook up.”
Wycoff said limited visibility and howling winds made communication nearly impossible. There was no way to see where Chappel’s team went.
“Randy’s team ran off in a direction, but we had to focus on getting down the hill and hope that we found them,” she said.
Sass agreed: “At that point, there was nothing we could do. We had to get off that mountain. We hoped that they found the trail down there.”
The work for the trio of mushers was not done. The team would be found later after a search was mounted by officials. But first the mushers had to make it into the race’s second checkpoint in Central to sound the alarm.
Chappel rode on one runner of Wycoff’s sled while she balanced on the other.
“It was just wicked up there,” Wycoff said. “You couldn’t see very far in front of you. The wind was just beating you. The top of my head was covered in ice.”
Sass broke the trail ahead of Wycoff and Chappel with the help of an incredibly stalwart lead dog named Silver, a 3-year-old Sass has had since he was a puppy.
“He’s the bomb,” Sass said. “I knew he could break trail. I thought we were gonna be stuck. But Silver knew the (Quest) trail was down there and he led us to it.”
Wycoff also praised her lead dogs, Addy and Pretty Girl, and she was very impressed by Silver.
“That is a trail-breaking dog,” she said. “The dogs were just awesome. Awesome. They got us down off that mountain. The dogs are the heroes, not us.”
In the end, the mushers found the Quest trail and were able to reach Central. Sass packed Chappel onto his sled as a passenger and got him to the checkpoint while Wycoff brought her dogs into Central around at 7:15 a.m.
The experience didn’t sour either Sass or Wycoff on the Quest.
“I was hoping for bad weather,” Sass said. “I thrive in that. This is why I love mushing. I’m looking forward to doing the 1,000-mile Quest next year.”